Here you go Kittens....
Let the games begin
Katharyn
---------------
Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Returns (Part 59)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism always welcome.
katharynrosser@hotmail.comSpoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe though reference is made to events that occur in both realities.
Summary: Tara returns to Sunnydale from LA and seeks Willow out. (Yeah that says seeks)
Disclaimer: I still don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories.
Rating: 15
Couples: VW/T with all that means
Notes: Nope
Thanks To: Jo and Kerry… but also (and I keep doing it) Xita who puts up with all our shit*S*
The Sidestep Chronicle
Returns
By
Katharyn Rosser
She watched the familiar streets of Sunnydale whiz by her through the darkened window of the Mayor’s limousine. So fast. Everything was moving so fast. She hadn’t asked him to send the car it but she should have known that he would do so anyway. The airport was far enough out of town to make walking impractical and there was virtually no such thing as a cab in Sunnydale, so she did appreciate it. Ideally she wouldn’t have flown back at all. She would have preferred to slip back in on the bus or by train. But there were none. So she had flown. Wolfram and Hart were bound to have called him to let him know what time her flight was. Her employer liked to keep track of her and they liked to help her employer.
And themselves.
Maybe his keeping tabs on her was not just because he liked her. He was actively involved in the whole Wolfram and Hart thing that she had discovered out there in LA. He had been working with them. It was he who had given Lilah the opportunity to get closer to her. He had put Lilah in the apartment with her and it was all just a big ploy.
Or so it seemed.
Lilah…
Tara actually felt sorry for the Mayor’s lawyer. Even after all that Lilah had done as part of that project Tara could still, kind of, like her. She could respect her and feel bad for having had to reject her so utterly. Not that she should have left the lawyer with any hope, but if, for even a moment, she had seen it – Lilah - coming she would have done something sooner to dissuade her. It sort of pointed out the limits of the magic too. Even the magic had never seen that coming. Even when she had
looked.Maybe she had been relying on it too much.
The magic. It told her that things were not as simple as they now appeared to be. She could not
read the Mayor at all, though she just
felt that he did care for her in his own twisted way. As for Lilah… she knew that there had been a type of avoidance of issues going on with the lawyer, probably to get around the possibility of lying to someone who could see through those lies. It was a lawyer kind of trick.
But that meant that everything Lilah had said was the truth. At least in its own way. No outright lies had been told.
What Lilah felt was never going to go anywhere. But, equally, it wasn’t a part of the project. It wasn’t
all a lie. She should have been able to resent them all, Lilah, Holland, the Mayor. Wolfram and Hart. But in amongst all the plotting there were also some truths. Truths that seemed to have confirmed that she really was human.
She had to believe that they would know, or be able to find out. Didn’t she? That was why she had gone to Wolfram & Hart in the first place. She had believed that they would be able to deal with, and that meant detect, the demon that she should have become.
As the car had crossed the city limits once again she had felt the whispering return to her. It hadn’t left her completely when she went to LA, but here… back in Sunnydale, on the Hellmouth it was more persistent. Even more persuasive. It wanted her. Not just her actions… it wanted her. The darkness wanted her.
And at the moment she was in the grey area between the darkness and the light. Unsure.
What the hell was she going to do?
There were so many things here in Sunnydale, so many problems. Up until yesterday her whole life had been devastatingly simple. There was the hunting, there was justice and there was Willow. And there was her heritage which was going to take everything else away from her.
Now that the heritage had been proved false everything was so much more complicated again. She didn’t even know who she was or why she had been told the things that she had been told. Why anyone would do that to a person… to their daughter? And granddaughter.
To their wife. Her mother.
And she was working for what was essentially an evil man – whatever good attributes he might possess. Now that they had achieved their shared aim of destroying the Master what was there left to do? When should she leave the Mayor’s employment? When could she leave him? Would he even let her out? She thought that he would. They had made an agreement to look at things again after the end of the Master. But… would he just
let her go?
Would Wolfram and Hart who obviously thought that they needed her?
They would just have to.
Everyone would have to let go.
Then there was Faith, Jenny and Mr Giles. What would they do now that they had found out, not that she was a demon, but instead that she was in love with one. What would they do about that? There was also still the fact that she worked for the Mayor for them to consider. Now the Master was gone that was going to be more and more of a problem for them. They would have to do something about him eventually. They would have to try. And maybe… maybe they would have to do something about Willow too.
Willow was a problem for all of them. To Faith and Mr Giles, she was a vampire. A killer. Nothing more. To the Mayor, Willow was the remnant of a deadly enemy. It might have been easier for them to overlook that single red-haired vampire amidst the greater horde… but now… Willow must surely be the most powerful bloodsucker left in Sunnydale. That made her a target. A threat.
And, for Tara, next to Willow everything else faded away. What was she going to do now… about Willow? About her and Willow? It hadn’t been Lilah’s misplaced feelings that had kept her awake the previous night, it had been her own about Willow. Everything came back to that. Absolutely everything and first things first. She had to find Willow.
Her driver signalled to head towards the rear of City Hall where they could pull into the entrance to the car park, but she stopped him from going off that way. Directed him to take her straight home instead. She couldn’t face the Mayor just yet. There was that other, tiny, thing on her mind. Willow. So instead he drove her back to the apartment. Apart from anything else she needed to drop off her stuff. Then she needed to find Willow if the vampire wasn’t there.
She had made a decision and now she had to act upon it. There was something that she had to do. To try and resolve all of this. Or at least make a start at that. At finding peace.
The driver had ummed and arrred about the change of direction. Of course the Mayor wanted to see her but he obviously hadn’t made it a direct instruction… otherwise the driver would have never even listened to her. The Mayor had to be concerned, for one reason or another, as by now Lilah or Holland Manners would certainly have called him and told him about the events of the previous night. She guessed it had probably been Holland, if anyone, Lilah… Lilah was probably not in the best frame of mind for the discussion that would have followed that news.
She had left the lawyer in a state that she hadn’t ever seen before. Not that Lilah was all weepy or emotional; if anything she was more distant than she had ever been with Tara. Pleasant, apologetic… and distant. Holding herself aloof from the pain that Tara knew she had caused the lawyer. It was so obviously a false front. But it was how Lilah was choosing to deal with the issue and that was something Tara had to understand and respect.
But she did feel kind of bad about what had happened, even though she didn’t know what else she could have done. She couldn’t, once she knew how Lilah was thinking and feeling, do anything but tell her friend the truth. There would never be anything between them – even without Willow being in her picture. There could never be anything there, not only because Tara felt nothing for her in that way… but Lilah wasn’t a ‘good’ person. She wasn’t the sort of person that Tara could… love.
And what sort of screwed up logic was that? She asked herself with a wry smile.
Willow wasn’t a ‘good person’… She wasn’t a person at all. But she had been
made into a demon. Lilah had made her own choice about how to live, what to be and who to work for. She had said as much. She had walked into Wolfram and Hart knowing what the firm was. She had chosen all of it. Tara supposed that the same reasoning should apply to her friendship with Lilah as well but that was hard to consider. She had been friendless for so long that it was hard to think about giving up one of the few friends she now had. Almost as hard as giving up Willow would be.
If it could work with Lilah – if they could be back to what they were – then she would like that. Her friend. But with everything that had happened in the office and the flat last night, Tara wasn’t sure that it ever could be.
The same.
Besides, despite putting a brave face on that morning, Lilah was obviously still coming to terms with the rejection. It was in her words, her movement and her expressions. The lawyer had been hurt and Tara was sorry about the pain, if not the rejection. People shouldn’t be hurt. But they were. Hurt came in all sorts of ways, from all sorts of places. And people.
And things.
Willow.
As she was handed her bag by the driver she looked up at the apartment building. The window looked to be closed, as she had left it. It was hard to tell from down here in the dim light. There were no obvious lights from inside but Willow wouldn’t even need them being what she was. Was she there? Well Willow had her own key and with the Bronze sealed off by the Sunnydale Police where else did her vampire lover have to go? Willow would have been there. Last night if not now. But with the sun long since down and no idea when or even if Tara was coming back, Willow was probably already out there. Killing.
Killing people. Killing humans.
I am human.It was funny how she felt no different and yet her mind told her that she should do. She had spent her life being told that she was half-demon, that on her twentieth birthday she would become the demon that was inside her. Intellectually she knew that, if it was true that she was totally human, there was no reason to feel different because she had not changed – but the truth was that she had changed with that possibility seeming so definite.
Everything had changed now.
Every damn thing in the world had changed. Or maybe just her…
If she was human then she had a
future for as long as she could keep herself alive in this world of darkness. Hunting vampires she could be killed. Crossing the street she might get hit by a bus. That future might just be a day… or it might another seventy years.
She was just the same as everyone else now. Nothing was fixed… despite the file.
And that changed everything in her world, because she wasn’t the same as she had been – whether she was human or not. She was working for a man who wanted to become a demon… within her lifetime now. She had found herself loving a vampire. A vampire that she had selfishly, and there was no other word for it, allowed to continue to hunt, feed and kill because she had wanted to have that demon in her life for as long as she had the capacity to feel. Now that might be another seventy years.
If Willow only killed a hundred times a year then that was another seven thousand deaths in that lifetime that Tara now had, when just one was too many.
She had wanted Willow.
She had got Willow too.
And the price was so high. Last night on Lilah’s, not very comfortable, couch she had lain awake thinking of just how long, if it was true she was human, she could allow Willow to keep hunting and killing. How many lives had to be lost to pay for her happiness? How many already had been? How many people had Willow killed? How many since they had found each other?
And the worst question she had to ask herself was if she was even happy?
If she had kept ignoring the truth then maybe she could have been at least content. If she had become a demon… but still able to want Willow then she would have been able to ignore it. As a human… as the person she appeared to be now… as the person that her mother and father had raised her to be… she just couldn’t be happy like that. Knowing that.
Could she?
Suffer not an evil thing to live Tara.
He had never said that… but she thought that he might have done. Under the circumstances. If he had known. He’d had very fixed views on good and evil.
Views that had taught her that she shared in something evil. Would become something evil. Yesterday. And it had all been so much piffle… as Mr Giles might have said.
Her father had lied to her, hadn’t he?
Why the hell had he done that? Inflicted that on her?
If he had…
She had no way to know as he was over four years dead now. Just like Willow. Except Willow was still walking around and hurting people. What if he had lived though? What life for her then? She would still be on the farm. Believing what he told her. Fearing it. Fearing him… and Donny. Maybe he would still be hurting her if it had happened like that. Maybe… he was still hurting her. In a different way.
But if he hadn’t died, she would never have
lived.If you could call this living, she mused as she unlocked the apartment door and stepped into the dark inside. She flicked the light on and there was nothing there. No Willow. There was evidence of the vampire being here whilst she had been away… but no Willow now.
Could she consider what she and Willow had together… living?
Or had the vampire sucked her into the grey area between death and life? Was that where she was now? In Willow’s world? Yet another grey place?
She had spent the night in LA on the couch with Lilah. Her friend. But the space next to her had felt so empty – even though Lilah was there. She had slept alone since being with Willow, but the vampire had sort of always been there too. She had been nearby. Tara had been able to feel her. She had been able to sense her… close. Last night there had been none of that – even when someone else was there. She had known that Willow was still… Willow. But she had not been able to
feel her nearness and that had been a lonely thing.
Tara didn’t like being lonely. Once she had thought that it made her strong. Self-reliant. Not any more. She found that she needed people now. Friends like Faith and Jenny… and she needed Willow too.
But what price was she paying for not being alone? Or rather what was the price that others were paying?
She went over to the lamp beside the couch. It was still there, good. The pendant. She should never, ever, have taken it off. She should never have allowed Willow to take it from her. Ever. It should have been there… to remind her of what she was doing. The pain was not her penance. Her conscience was her penance and she obviously needed it pricking because it hadn’t been working as it should have been. More grey that she had submerged in.
The pain it gave her was just a tiny part of what others were enduring so that she didn’t have to know loneliness in that form. It was a tiny part of what Willow was doing to them. Just a tiny bit of that. Tara had carefully and firmly protected herself. She had insisted that the vampire never bite her. Perhaps that had been wrong. Perhaps she needed to be bitten. Deserved it. She had never once tried to stop Willow from harming any other person. And she had to… Willow had to if she was going to exist at all.
What right did Willow have to exist in the world?
What right did Tara have to condemn others to death to preserve her Willow?
She couldn’t think of a single reason… aside from the fact that she was drawn to the red-haired woman. Vampire. That she had come to love her. As a human could. And now she was human, staying human… shouldn’t she show some compassion for others? Compassion had been missing from her actions all this time.
Compassion as a human thing.
Don’t be selfish Tara. Shut the hell up Daddy. This is my choice. My life.
Tara put her bag down, wondering briefly if she should hang up that lovely dress that she was never likely to wear again. But there were more important things to worry about. Much more important things. She had the pendant and Willow was nowhere near here. Nor was any other vampire. She would have to go out and find her. Which suited her just fine as she had things to think about on her way. It was easier to think while she was hunting.
Willow had left some of her clothes lying around the place, even though she knew how much Tara hated the mess, or more importantly from a survival point of view, not being able to find things when she needed them. From a survival point of view she should not have settled here. She wasn’t, really, surviving… she was slowly being killed by guilt. Quickly, automatically, she gathered the clothes together, smelling the unperfumed scent of the vampire on the fabrics and placed them in a cupboard. It was a cupboard that Willow never used herself, but in which the vampire knew she could always find her clothes after Tara had cleared them up.
It was just one more thing about them that was incompatible. Willow stood for chaos. Tara for order. Death and life. Black and white… at least she wanted to be the light. Where they actually met was somewhere in the middle - the grey area. Everything was grey with them. More or less. Darker or lighter grey.
Heading for the door again, Tara only paused at the drawer where she kept her stakes, smiled when she realised that Willow had been whittling for her again, then wiped the smile from her face as she picked up a stake.
Just the one.
She would only need the one for what she had to do.
--------------------
Perhaps it was wandering around on foot that had done it, but she hadn’t noticed the change in Sunnydale when the car had brought her though it. Yes things had been getting quieter since the end of the Master, yes it had been more of a mopping operation. Yes the life had started to return to Sunnydale after dark, if barely.
But that wasn’t what seemed to have changed. Everything, even in the darkness, seemed brighter. More colourful. More vivid. More… alive. It was as if she had been wearing a dark veil all the time that she had been here before and somehow it had been lifted from her eyes by the events of the previous night. Twenty four hours or so she had been human now. Her first day… If that was what she really was.
Having no idea where Willow was she had set out towards the hunting grounds that the vampire, her vampire, had always seemed to favour. It had worried her for a long time, particularly after Faith had arrived, that Willow seemed to be a little predictable in her hunting. Obviously she was following the food, but the Slayer and the Watcher were not stupid. Before there might have been an abundance of kills by dozens of vampires to mask Willow’s own. Now… Willow would stick out like a sore thumb in a town that was no longer a haven for vampires.
It worried her… but at least now Faith knew who Willow was – if that could be a good thing. The red-headed vampire was distinctive, and after what they had been through the Slayer was not going to mistake her for ‘just another vampire.’ She hoped that, once she was healed, Faith might leave Willow alone.
And that was a terrible thing to wish for a Slayer.
What the Slayer did was for all humans and here she was here wishing that Faith would forsake her sacred duty. But then Tara’s own duty, though it might lack sacredness, had been forsaken over and over again. She clasped the stake more tightly in her hand and wandered on looking around at the sights as if seeing them for the first time.
Faith might actively hunt Willow.
Those few unbroken neon signs with their brilliant pinks, blues and greens… so powerful when before they had seemed dull. Maybe it was a human thing? But she had always been human. Always. It was just that, for some reason, her father and grandfather had told her that she was a demon. Evil. They had told her mother the same thing… and that was why she had never seen the demon in her mommy.
It had never been there. Had it?
Why had they done it?
Why did they keep doing it?
It was for your own good Tara. Your family loves you.
Bastards…
She was human? She was perfectly normal… except for the loving a vampire thing. Willow. She had to find Willow and deal with this. She had to make it right. Better at least, because they were so far beyond ‘right’ that it was in no way funny. It never had been funny.
When had she ever laughed with Willow? When had they ever enjoyed something aside from each other? A joke, a film… maybe some cartoon? They both liked Miss Kitty and even there they were at odds. Willow was trying to make the young cat into a hunter whilst she, Willow’s own ‘Miss Kitty,’ just wanted the cat to be a pet. But it was the cat’s nature to be a ruthless hunter. It was simply that she chose to allow the affection of a human.
Willow did the same thing.
In her search she both found and avoided Larry. He must still be covering for Faith. Tara had done that herself, but then she had always been out there anyway. There was a gap with Faith in recovery. If Larry had known about Willow then he had shown no sign of that in the past couple of weeks and he was hardly one to hide his feelings, as she had seen when he had been less than impressed as Faith had, in her way, dated his own boyfriend’s twin brother.
For all of about one night.
Maybe even less than that.
Faith and her ways. Once again she found that she had to compare Faith to Willow to find anyone that either was remotely like in her experience.
Still, Larry was determined enough not to let that interfere with hunting vampires – if he even knew. That determination had to be what was seeing him through life in Sunnydale. As a native he had survived, in Sunnydale, far longer than Faith had been the Slayer. He, with Mr Giles, had held the line against the vampires, lost friends and had some successes against them. And now he had helped see off the Master.
More to him than met the eye.
Tara had to worry though. What was going to happen once Faith was fully fit again? What then? There were fewer vampires… and so now Faith might go after Willow. Deliberately. She knew the Slayer well enough to have a real fear that she might do that. Or Willow might go after Faith. With no Master to be defeated, when even Willow had to accept Tara had needed a Slayer’s help, then the willingness to coexist in town with Faith might just evaporated. Then again… it might not be an issue after she had found Willow.
The unused stake in her hand suddenly felt very heavy as the pendant started to torture her throat. The intensity of the sensation suggested that it was Willow… that or lots of other vampires. Just the one stake. Either way one would be all she needed for this. This might be her first kill as a ‘human.’ Or at least as someone who believed herself to be a human.
Would it make any difference to her? How she would do it? How she would react? Did she actually believe it?
Perhaps she had been able to fight them before because she didn’t mind dying. Because perhaps death had been preferable to becoming… something else. Something more like them. Just becoming. Fatalism might have played its part in her successes. Until last night she had thought that she would have been better off dead that what she was to become… so death had not been something to fear. Something to avoid yes, but not to be feared. Now… well she was out here and she was afraid. Afraid of living. Afraid of dying. Afraid of hurting others. Afraid of letting people get hurt. Afraid of Willow. Afraid for Willow.
Afraid of herself and what she had become without even actually being a demon.
All by her little human self she had become something that was less than human. And that… that caused tiny doubts to spring to the fore. Some not so tiny.
She had allowed so much. She had failed to help so many. How many more would there have to be?
At least one more…
It
was Willow that the pendant had detected. At first she just sort of felt it. It was instinctive. It was at the very core of her, where the dreams had come from. The dreams that had led her to Willow. But had they intended to lead her to
this Willow? Was fate that cruel? Tara could well believe in the power of prophecy having seen the file at Wolfram and Hart. She could even accept her own part in it… nebulous as it had appeared. And she could accept that they, she and Willow, were fated to be together simply because she knew it with every fibre of her being. It was the truth.
What she doubted was that… this was what she was supposed to have.
The file had mentioned happiness. And she wasn’t sure that she could see a way to be truly happy with Willow.
At least with a Willow who was like this.
Maybe she needed to be a demon to be happy with a demon… because she didn’t think that a human could be. Not with a vampire anyway. So if she was supposed to know happiness and true love with Willow… that meant that either something about Willow would change. Or something about her would.
Or had.
Willow was stalking a young woman who looked like she had been drinking or something. Willow never looked around, but if she had she would have seen Tara at the other end of the street, or the alley… wherever. Tara followed her watching. Knowing that Willow had to feed. And if she didn’t…
What?
No more vampire?
No more killer.
No more death on her own hands. Blood.
They’d had contingencies. They had used one. There had been others listed. She had seen that in the file. Contingencies that they would never use because this… thing… suited them. But something had to change. There might be other ways…
When the scream rang out into the still night air Tara just stopped. She couldn’t see Willow who was in another alley off the street. Tara stopped in the doorway, refusing to turn that last corner. Willow had to feed, but it was another death she could have prevented. She clutched the stake and sank to the doorstep that was there, resting her head in her hands, the stake rough against her cheek.
Better not to see it happening. The pendant burned her. She had heard the scream. She
knew. That was more than enough for her to feel it. She would probably taste it afterwards… she always thought that she did, but really that might have been the, well deserved, guilt when Willow kissed her. She didn’t have to see it as well. To have it burned into her mind. Willow lingering over her kill. She might not play anymore but nor did Willow like to bolt her food. Tara tried to imagine the sensation of the blood being drawn from the young woman. Sucked through a gaping hole torn in her neck.
The life ebbing as the blood left her.
When would the loss of blood slow a heart made faster by the fear? The fear that Willow craved. ‘For the taste.’ Had she, in her mind, thought that Willow had changed? That somehow she was better than she had been? That she could be anything other than what she was?
She had hoped.
She had wanted to believe. But surely it was all false?
She had always known. That… the thing in the alley was who the vampire called Willow was at the core of her nature. Everything else was secondary to that aspect of her. It had to be. Just as Tara was human, flawed and felt the guilt, Willow was a vampire, a demon. She was flawed in very different ways. And she felt nothing… nothing but lust, affection and maybe passion.
Tara wasn’t sure which of them was worse. At least Willow just did what she did to survive. Well now it was her turn to survive.
She could hear the footsteps coming back down the alley and she had to make a decision. She could go now. She could wait for Willow at home. Or she could do this now. Here. Out in the streets. Within sight of the latest person Willow had killed. All those victims in whose blood Tara bathed her hands each and every night. She looked at her hand, expecting to see it coated. Soon perhaps.
She stood in the doorway. Out of sight. Giving herself time. Time to decide. Time to think if there was another way. But she had to do this. There
was no other way. It was why she had brought the stake after all. There was no putting it off anymore. She had to do this and get it out of the way.
Get on with her life and be sure.
If she could get on. If whatever powers were out there would let her.
Willow, of course, already knew that she was there. The stake was balanced in her fingers, up the back of her arm and as the vampire turned to her Tara made no effort to embrace or touch her. Willow picked up on the standoffishness. Perhaps she respected it when she usually would not have done simply because she had no idea what Tara might be.
After what she had been told the last time they had been out in the dark, and under these stars, could Tara blame her?
No. No blame.
Willow had to fear what she had become because Tara had been afraid of it. Was afraid of it. That was the whole problem. She was still afraid. She always would be.
Willow was guilty of a great many things but the fault of holding back was not one of them. “What are you?” the vampire finally asked after they had stood looking at each other for long moments. Only after speaking did she wipe the last of the blood from her lips with one of those long, delicate, pleasure giving and deadly fingers.
Monster… monster…
A monster Tara loved. She rotated the stake in her fingers, saw Willow look at the hand that held it, but the vampire would not be able to see it. Besides Tara always had stakes. Always. Why should this time be any different?
She always had a stake. Just one this time though. She only needed one.
“I’m me,” Tara told her in reply.
The look that Willow gave her told Tara that the answer was not good enough And she could see why that was. Even if she was a demon she still would have been herself. It was no answer at all and it told Willow nothing. Unfortunately she did not have a better one. Not yet. “Not a demon?” the vampire asked, turning away from her and starting to walk down the street in the direction of the apartment.
It was the ultimate gesture of trust and it had to have been very deliberate. Calculated. But despite walking away she could tell that the vampire was coiled, ready. Not looking but prepared, just in case. Tara, as a demon, could have killed her at that moment. With Willow’s back turned, not even looking. She could have if she had changed. She still could… she had the stake anyway. She let it slip through her fingers, so that eventually it was in her grasp and set off after Willow. She didn’t answer the question, just came up behind Willow and raised the stake.
She needed to see Willow’s face as she did this. So that she could judge the reaction of the vampire. So that she could let Willow know why she was doing this without having to say the words that would damn her. “Willow,” she called. The vampire stopped just in front of her and turned around slowly.
Willow took in the sight. The raised stake. The look of determination. The pleading in that look as Tara pressed the sharp point of the stake against her other hand, piercing the flesh until blood started to drip from her hand. The vampire could smell the blood. Willow’s eyes travelled with the droplet following it to Tara’s wrist then to the ground as it dripped.
“Please,” Tara said. “I need to know.”
“Kitty?” Willow asked the question but she knew the answer already. All her heightened senses were focused on the blood. Where Tara needed them to be. She needed that.
“I have to be sure Willow,” She held her hand out to the vampire and Willow took it eagerly. Too eagerly perhaps but what choice did she really have? Willow had tasted her before. Now she had to again. To remove any lingering doubt that there had been a change in her.
This time… this time Willow did drink from her. And Tara let her. Not much. Willow did not take much at all – more than a taste though. It made Tara feel sick giving in to that. There was no pleasure there – she understood those that paid vampires for this even less. She had been forced by circumstance to let Willow do what she had always sworn she would not allow.
But Willow had not bitten her. Not really. She had wounded herself and offered Willow the taste.
“What am I?” she asked the vampire as she pulled away letting the stake fall to the ground with a wooden clatter.
“Mine,” Willow told her, satisfied with the results. Tara’s blood was smeared on her lips and her chin.
“Yours,” Tara murmured in response. Somehow, even as she spoke she knew the answer was both right and wrong. Willow knew that she was the same as she had been. She was definitely
still human… but what she was doing with her life was not humane. Not good.
Not what she should have been at all.
“Yours,” she repeated and Willow took her bleeding hand in her own and led her home. Tara chose that the selection of that hand was nothing to do with wanting to lick it when they got there.
But the vampire did that anyway.
***************
by Sassette » Fri Jul 05, 2002 11:55 pm 
So lovely to be surprised and astounded in a fic. Loved this! 
at: 7/6/02 1:24:52 am
